


A building appeared just across the square

by hypothetical_otters



Category: Wooden Overcoats
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 20:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14221629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypothetical_otters/pseuds/hypothetical_otters
Summary: Georgie, being an angel, is great at guessing whether things are occult or ethereal.





	A building appeared just across the square

**Author's Note:**

> Not quite a fic. there's no plot here, just 2k about Georgie being an angel, Eric being a demon, Rudyard being a weather god, and Antigone ruling over the dead. An au that no one asked for, but I here it is.

Reality had shifted, a new funeral home stood where an antiques shop had always been. For the humans living on Piffling the building had always been there. They had known the antiques dealer, and mourned him when he died. The gods and the angel living just across the square never met Stanley Carmichael, despite the humans insistence that they had performed a beautiful ceremony for the deceased. They watched the mysterious funeral home open within minutes of their rivals arrival. They itched to banish him and his funeral home to somewhere else, but something stopped them. Possibly a desire to keep appearances of humanity, or perhaps the strong warding against divine intervention. Rudyard, the weather god, spits fury and lightning sparks from his fingertips, and promises retribution for this slight. Georgie flickers into nothingness and back again, a brief flight around the world is easier and better than dissolving the town into non-existence in a moment of anger. Antigone, a god of death (or an omen), wonders how quickly she can leave the island and panics at Rudyard and Georgie’s obvious displays of ethereal behaviour. Eric Chapman notices the darkening sky and the crackle of lightning from Funn Funeral’s and feels a divine being rapidly disappear and reappear, and shivers.

Eric is a demon and has been stationed on earth for several centuries. He very rarely sees anyone from Below, and never anyone from Above. He’s become despondent and thinks that humanity can do its own soul destroying work without him. He moves to Piffling, because nothing happens there and he fancies a few years of nothing happening. He also threw a dart at a map and Piffling was were the dart landed. There’s nothing fated about it. 

Georgie is an angel. After thousands of years stationed on earth she thinks humans are fine as they are and, really with free will they don’t need her to tell them what’s morally good or to send them on the right path. She goes to Piffling because it’s sleepy and easy to deal with, and nothing really happens. She’s been in Piffling, pretending to be human, for a few years. She’s working at a funeral home, the village and the islands only funeral home, and it’s peaceful until Chapman’s opens, just across the square. 

Eric is welcomed to the village with a fervour that he emphatically doesn’t want. He opens a funeral home, another funeral home, because deep down he’s still a trickster pretending to be human. Rudyard Funn interrupts Eric’s afternoon, and brings rain with him. Rudyard rails at him that they can’t have two funeral parlours, but Eric wouldn’t be Eric if he gave in and left Piffling Vale alone. He finds the signed papers from the mayor, or creates them from nothing, and thankfully he gets the signatures right, and the mayor here doesn’t always read everything he’s given so Eric, of course, gets away with this. There’s something not right about Rudyard, but Eric can’t quite figure out what. 

At Funn funerals, Georgie recognises Eric for what he is; funeral homes, or any business, don’t get started within a day, there’s something occult or ethereal going on and she reckons it’s occult. She’s right, of course, she’s great at guessing whether things are occult or ethereal. She meets Eric when he storms into Funn funerals, unfortunately bringing sunshine with him, and she knows he’s not what he appears. 

Eric knows when he meets Georgie what she is, and knows why his earlier thoughts were wrong. There’s something very right about Rudyard, he’s working with an angel. He wonders whether it’s a good idea to stick around when there’s a member of the heavenly host living just across the square, but figures it’s worth it.

Eric gets on with everyone on the island, and gets away with a surprising amount of changing reality. He’s got a bouncy castle, a bowling alley, a funeral parlour and go-sa-someone knows what else on a tiny channel island. The inhabitants accept this as normal, and he assumes that’s because they like him, but it could be that they’ve been living with an angel in their midst for years and this is reality for them. But he’s glad they ignore these things, despite the fact that pretending things hadn’t changed since he arrived would have been fun. 

Rudyard, a minor god, dislikes Chapman. Not for what he represents as a demon, but more for interrupting their lives on Piffling Vale. Which he supposes is what a demon does, comes into people’s lives and ruins them for fun and eternal damnation. The weather on Piffling gets worse after Chapman bursts into Funn funerals uninvited, and stays stormy for several weeks despite both Georgie and Eric’s attempts at making things sunny again. Rudyard takes no small pleasure in knowing that in this one area of divine acts he is better than Eric Chapman. 

Eric asks Georgie for a drink, and for some reason she accepts. They talk about how long they’ve been on earth and how long it’s been since either of them heard from Above or Below – longer for Eric than Georgie, but not by much. People who see them assume they’re on a date, and that’s not what this is. They’ve got more in common with each other than anyone else on the island, or the planet, and more in common than with heaven or hell, but it’s not a date. Georgie hates Eric on principle, and Eric doesn’t want to date an angel. 

Rudyard watches this not date and wonders how this will play out. Does he need to take his sister and run from the island before something goes wrong? If Eric and Georgie do fight, for the greater good or because they’ve seen no action for several thousand years, there’s not much Rudyard can do to avoid the fallout, but he could pretend. He watches with something not unlike rising panic as he realises Georgie and Eric have more in common than he and Georgie have, and they might leave the island together. He’d have to find someone else to talk to about divine acts, or let Antigone know he is technically a god and then talk to her. He’s going to sabotage Georgie and Eric, for that reason and that reason alone. 

(Before Eric arrives on Piffling. Georgie and Rudyard discover that each other is divine, and for the first time in years they talk to each other properly. A conversation that begins in hello and ends in goodbye, with heartbreak and loss in between. Although it doesn’t stay that way for long, once they get over their inability to recognise each other as supernatural and over the impulses and quirks that pretending to be human has left them with they get one better than they did before. Antigone thinks that somethings up with them, as much as she spends any time with them, and they insist nothing’s going on between them. Until, of course, they realise that insisting that nothing’s happening is boring and that there is something happening. Antigone, bored of Rudyard and Georgie’s obliviousness, goes back to her mortuary until everything blows over. She doesn’t emerge again until Eric arrives and there’s drama of a different sort.) 

Obviously something goes wrong. A fundamental difference in how Georgie and Eric see themselves, or see humanity, or something means that for all their attempts at friendliness they part company on bad terms. Rudyard is thrilled that Georgie won’t leave him or the business, thrilled that someone else hates Chapman on principle even if their reasons are more ground-breaking than undercutting a business. Antigone doesn’t really know what’s going on, and is somehow alone in finding Eric attractive. Eric hates that his attempts at talking truthfully to someone have ended in them hating him, even if Georgie is an angel and he’s a demon. 

Someone from Above tries to contact Georgie after she talks to Eric. The radio in Rudyard’s bedroom crackles to life, then a voice tries to speak to her. It doesn’t say much, because Rudyard turns the radio off and off and off, as the voice tries again and again to speak to Georgie. The voice gives up, and leaves Georgie and Rudyard to their lie in. just across the square Eric is rudely awoken by a voice from Below, and he listens as he is repeatedly told not to fraternise with the heavenly host. He can’t ignore the voice, but he can ignore it’s message. Despite being a god, or perhaps because of this, Rudyard doesn’t get messages from anyone regarding the states of heaven and hell. He gets the occasional prayer from someone who wants a snow day or something rained off, but nothing about the fate of the wicked or the divine. 

Rudyard glowers as despite the clear signs that Chapman isn’t welcome here, he is still on the island. He supposes that most people on the island have welcomed him and the weather momentarily brightens. Then he remembers he’s in a small boat with Georgie, Antigone, Georgie’s gran, and a dead seagull. The sky darkens. Georgie could get them back to Piffling with a click of her fingers, but doesn’t because of her gran. How an angel has a gran Rudyard doesn’t know, but does know better than to ask. A bigger boat appears on the horizon and the sky crackles as Rudyard hears Chapman’s voice. Georgie grumbles under her breath in enochian, quiet enough that human ears can’t hear. Chapman saves them, because he’s a terrible demon and a good person. Rudyard realises they still haven’t got rid of the dead seagull, then realises that the seagull is in their boat where they are not, and since there is a storm brewing he strikes the boat with lightning and gives the seagull a Viking funeral. Proving that he is, in this instance, a better funeral director than Chapman. Someone speculates that the lightning strike was an act of God, he can’t help but smile. Until the reverend questions the existence of God and the lightning strikes nearer the boat. Georgie hits Rudyard on the arm and tells him not to hurt Nigel. Neither of them notice Eric staring at them like all of his questions have been answered.

Antigone watches Rudyard and Georgie dance around each other, and wonders how they can play at being human. She has far more important things to do than pretend to be something she isn’t, so she lets the people of Piffling gossip about her, and think that she’s dead. She’s always liked that rumour. She’s not dead though, she’s colder to the touch than most humans, and seems to be aloof and above it all, but she isn’t dead. She’s busy though, so not having to talk to their human neighbours does free up her time. There is always someone struggling to understand that there is an afterlife and that they are going to it, so she has to comfort people through their own deaths. She has a script for that. 

Piffling has very little resembling a beach. The coast is there, yes, but it’s such a small island that there’s almost no sand. What coast there is, is encroaching on the land, and before long the island might vanish. Before long in this case, means long after all the current islanders and their descendants are dead, but in the blink of an eye for immortal creatures. There is a castle on the island, or a crumbling tower. Rumour has it the ravens circling it are waiting for their king to return, a man who said that the ravens kept him going. A woman sits in her mortuary and waits for the ravens to realise her true heritage. She knows the ravens belong to her, and she could use them as messengers, but the ravens refuse to acknowledge her power. 

Rudyard closes the door of Funn Funerals for the last time. He wants to move on, he’s been on this island for nearly two hundred years, it’s time to leave. He and Georgie are going to San Marino, because they said they would, and there’s no reason for them not to go. They get the boat to England, then the train to London, and fly from there. They could have been there in the blink of an eye, but they’re travelling like humans because when they planned this trip they forgot they were anything other than human. (The weather in San Marino is perfect.)

Antigone revels in not having to pretend to be human. When she leaves Piffling for the last time, she does so quickly. She vanishes from sight, not especially caring if the residents see her. She will not be back, until of course they die and she takes them from this world to the next. She will not see Georgie or Rudyard again, nor will she see Eric Chapman though she is of course far less sad about that. Rudyard and Georgie enjoy pretending to be what they are not, and need people, Antigone doesn’t. She sees them at the end of their lives, and is content with that. She worries humans when they see her, an omen of death is very rarely welcomed.

**Author's Note:**

> I might add to this later, but I'm not promising anything. I have read Good Omens, which is an influence on this. Another influence, certainly for one of the later paragraphs is Felix's Patreon video Regnwald and The Lord Boy. Go support him on Patreon if you aren't already.


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